u chose to die!"

"His Highness," spoke the gray-haired priest, "returned for the
senorita's answer."

"My answer?" cried Jacqueline. "You mean, father, for my sake?"

"Yes."

Driscoll started violently, perplexed no longer. "By God, sir," he
swore, and clapped Maximilian on the shoulder, "but you are a man!"

The prince recoiled, his instincts of breeding in arms against the
savage equality. But then, slowly, a smile that was almost beatific
touched his lips, and without knowing it, he straightened proudly, as
majesty would.

"A man?" he murmured, breathing exaltation. "Then am I, at my last
moment, come into harmony with God's own ordering of the universe. For
he made man on the sixth day, not a Hapsburg. Man, and after His Own
Image--Oh, but that is the title the hardest of all to win! You--you
don't think, senor, that you would like to take it back?"

Driscoll reddened inexplicably. Murguia's ivory cross was still in his
pocket.

"No!" he blurted out with sudden defiance. "It's the truth!"

"Then," said Maximilian solemnly, "on your word I stake my faith.
To-morrow, at the judgment-seat, I shall hope to hear myself called so."

"Your Highness," questioned Jacqueline in a kind of daze, "Your Highness
did not _intend_ to escape last night?"

"No, he did not," Driscoll answered for him. "He got Miramon and Mejia
started all right, and then, without knowing that your plot had failed,
he turned back to this cell here, alone."

"Your Highness, you did that for--for----"

Her voice broke, and she stopped abruptly and went to the narrow window.
With her back to them, she groped for the dainty bit of cambric that was
her handkerchief.

"So you see, my daughter," said the priest, drawing near her, "what he
would have given, what, before Heaven, he has given, to tell you what
you so hotly resent. Do you resent it now?"

The beautiful head shook slowly. She was touching her eyes with her
handkerchief.

"Then you will not let his sacrifice be in vain? You will marry him?"

Impetuously she turned, and faced them. There were blinding drops, clear
as diamonds, on the long lashes. "Oh Your Highness, Your--Oh, there is
something you can tell me that is--that is inexpressibly better?"

"Let me know what it is."

"It is if--if you can forgive me.--Mon Dieu, why did you need to heap
this terrible sacrifice on me? Why could you not remember that I tried
to drive you from your empire? That I plotted against you? Th